Confessions in the Dark (6 page)

Or for a bare handful of minutes. The moment broke, shivering to the floor with the call of, “Aunt Rena?”

Serena's gaze darted away, her chest heaving like she, too, were taking the first full breath she'd had in a while. “Yes, sweetie?”

“Does Mr. Cole want a snack?”

She laughed. “Is that your way of asking if you can have one?”

“No...”

Even Cole could see through that one.

She flashed him a grimacing grin. “I'd better feed the monkey before he stops being subtle. I bought some cupcakes—”

Cole stopped her before she could reach the kitchen, tucking his crutch beneath his arm as he reached out. He wrapped his hand around her wrist, and the warmth soaked through his skin.

As if burned, he let her go. Patting at his side, he fumbled with the strap of his bag until he could get at the flap and wrench it open. He dug around inside and came up with a Ziploc bag. “Here.” He passed it over.

She stared at the bag like it held worms. “What—”

“Brownies.” He cleared his throat, mouth suddenly dry. “Homemade.”

Foolish. Nothing she'd needed, and yet he'd been so overcome last night. So guilty and sick with his own behavior.

So lost, with nothing to do.

She jerked her head up, eyes narrowed, brows skewed. “You
bake
?”

He forced his shoulders down. He didn't need to get defensive about this.

“It's a hobby.” It was chemistry, was what it was, numbers and measurements and the proper things added at the proper times. And it had always made Helen smile.

“So it is.” The lines on Serena's forehead didn't smooth out at all, but she shrugged, taking his offering with her into the kitchen. “Hey, Max, look what Cole brought you.”

Max's eyes went wide behind his glasses. “Dude.”

As she busied herself pulling plates down from the cabinet and pouring glasses of milk, Cole hovered in the doorway, surveying the scene.

It was...nice. Domestic and warm, and he felt suddenly, terribly out of place.

Until Serena turned to him, one hand extended toward the table. Toward a plate and a full glass of milk and a chair already pulled out in welcome. For him.

And an empty place inside his heart squeezed down so hard it hurt.

Her expression faltered. “Did you not want...I can make tea, or...”

“No,” he got out, almost choking on it. “No. It's perfect.”

Serena was trying not to hover. While still, you know, hovering.

Cole and Max were sitting kitty-corner to each other at the little table tucked against the wall in her kitchen, eating their brownies and drinking their milk. She wrapped a brownie in a napkin for herself, grabbing it and another glass of milk and edging toward the doorway.

“Max, sweetie, why don't you show Mr. Cole your study guide?”

He dug it out from the pile she'd sent him into the kitchen with, smudging the cover with chocolate, and she tried not to wince. Cole took it and started flipping through the pages, expression even. After a moment, he set it down decisively. “Let's start from the beginning, then, shall we?”

She gave him some credit. For all that he'd protested the idea of working with a kid, he was approaching it like a natural, talking to Max as if he were a grown-up. No dumbing things down. And no swearing, either—at least so far.

Keeping her ears half open, she retreated to the living room, settling in on the end of the couch where she could still see them without being in their way. The deep timber of Cole's voice floated on the air, the lilting quality to his accent lulling her. She wanted to wrap it around herself like a warm blanket. Could just picture a world where he sat around her apartment reading to her—or heck, explaining fifth-grade math.

Content with the fact that they seemed to have things more or less in hand, Serena pulled out her bag and the pile of essays she still had to grade and got to work.

She was on the sixth one when Max let out one of his more aggravated groans. Sitting straighter, she glanced up. Max was a good kid, smart and hardworking and destined for big things. But he could also get cranky in the afternoon, and if he was already getting frustrated...

“No, no, see,” Cole interrupted, leaning forward and plucking a pencil right out of Max's hand. “There's a trick to these.”

He launched into something even she wasn't completely sure she understood, scribbling as he went and pointing at the study guide.

And for a second, all she could do was blink and stare.

Gone were the sullen expression and the perpetual scowl. The man's whole demeanor came alive, eyes sparkling and voice rising. Because he was excited about reducing fractions.

“Oh!” Max threw his hands in the air. “Why don't they just teach it that way in the first place?” With that, he stole his pencil right back and bent his head to the page in front of him.

Letting out a breath, Serena sagged into the couch. Without really meaning to, she'd found herself on high alert, all ready to step in and intervene. She hadn't needed to, though. Cole had been entirely in control. He'd been amazing, was what he'd been.

As if he could feel her gaze on him, the wonder with which she beheld him, he turned his head, keen eyes focusing on hers. When he grinned, it just about took her breath away.

It could've been seconds or minutes or years that passed like that, their gazes locked across the entire breadth of her apartment. The moment held until Max lifted his head from his work and turned the page around. “Like that?”

Cole startled, maybe as lost as she had been. In an exaggerated movement, he widened his eyes and gave his head a little shake. He refocused on Max, studying his paper for half a second before nodding. “Yes. Brilliant.”

Serena's pulse fluttered as she returned her own gaze to her lap and the pile of essays there. The weight of Cole's stare was burned into her, a warmth swimming through her veins, making it hard to think about anything beyond it. But somehow she managed.

Still, when her phone chirped an hour later, the air in the place carried a near-physical charge. A humming static that had her fumbling with the buttons. She stared at the screen in confusion, surprised to see so much time had passed.

“Max.” Her voice came out rasping and rough, and she coughed into her hand as if the state of her lungs had anything to do with it. “Your grandma's on her way. Time to get cleaned up.”

She rose from her seat as he finished one last problem and beamed with pride at Cole's approval of his solution. Cole held out a hand for him to shake. “Well done, sir.”

Of course Max ate that up. He accepted the handshake and bowed to boot. If Cole wasn't careful, the kid would be asking to be knighted by the time they got to the end of the prep book. Leaning against the fridge, Serena shooed him to go wash his hands.

Cole sat back, one eyebrow raised as he directed his gaze at her.

She waited until Max was out of sight. “You were really good with him. I think he learned more in the last hour than he has in the last year.”

“He's a bright boy.”

“You're a good teacher.”

He laughed, shaking his head, but there was something freer to him than there usually was. “Tell that to my linear algebra students.”

At the mention of his old career, the first hint of a shadow returned to his eyes.

She shrugged, shifting her weight. Treading with care. “I bet they learned a lot from you, whether or not they liked the class.”

“Doubtful. Teaching was fine. I enjoyed it. But I didn't have the temperament for it. The patience.” He fiddled with Max's discarded pencil, twirling it absently between his fingers. “Research was more my speed. You could publish a paper and teach the world about what you were doing without that pesky interacting-with-people thing.”

Serena frowned. She appreciated his recognition that teaching required a certain amount of skill, but he'd shown plenty of patience this afternoon. “Well. Your temperament just now seemed fine.”

“Lucky you caught me on a good day, then,” he said.

Before she could push him any further, Max returned, and the next few minutes were a flurry of chaos as he struggled to cram the contents of his schoolbag that had apparently exploded all over her apartment back in. Her mom wasn't stopping in that day, so Serena watched for her car out the window. When she pulled up, Serena paced him through their usual goodbye, made him thank Cole again, and sent him on his way.

As the door closed behind him, she sank down into the couch. She loved that she got to see her nephew most days, and with Cole doing the heavy lifting, this afternoon had been easier than most. But she'd been on her feet and dealing with preteens of one sort or another since seven that morning, and the last of her reserves was just about done.

Letting her head loll against the cushions, she spied the brownie she'd grabbed for herself but never gotten around to eating. Cole hadn't budged from his seat at her table yet, though he'd scooted his chair around and grabbed his crutches, looking more or less ready to stage his escape. She held up the brownie before bringing it to her mouth. “So you make these from scratch, you said?”

It failed to quite match the image of him she had in her mind, but he nodded in confirmation. Max certainly hadn't complained about the quality of his baking—and the kid wasn't shy about that kind of thing when Serena got the crummy grocery store ones instead of the good ones from the bakery down the street. With a shrug, she took a bite.

Her brows just about hit her hairline. “Holy crap.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“That's an
amazing
thing.” It was dense and fudgy and loaded with chocolate chips, and if she hadn't been attracted to Cole from the get-go, she might've been willing to overlook a whole multitude of sins with this on the offer. “Wow.”

He gave her a smirking sort of a smile. “Glad you approve.”

“No, seriously, where did you learn to bake like this?”

And she was starting to recognize it now—the way darkness could creep over his features. The downward tilt to his mouth that appeared when they were close to crossing one of his lines. “Recipe books.”

With that, he stood, balance all skewed to one side as he got his crutches tucked under his arms.

Was she really supposed to let it go at that, though? She'd followed enough recipes in her day, and none of her results had ever been as good as this. “No no no. There has to be a secret.”

“There's not—”

“Can you teach me?”

She hadn't meant to say that out loud. She'd already asked so much of him with the tutoring for Max. He had to be exhausted with the lot of them.

But he turned to face her. “Can you take me to my doctor's appointment next week?”

“Of course.” She'd promised him that from the very outset. “As long as it's after I get out of school. Whenever you need.”

“Then we're agreed. Baking lessons and help with fractions.”

“You don't have to.”

He even seemed surprised when he opened his mouth. “I don't mind.”

Oh. Well, all right, then.

She grinned as she said, “Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

S
o.” There was a creeping feeling just under Cole's skin, making his hands too warm, his palms damp. “What has you so keen to learn to bake?”

A few days had passed since Serena had brought it up, and he hadn't expected her to forget it, precisely, but neither had he been prepared for her to come knocking on his door again so soon. In retrospect, he really shouldn't have been surprised. The woman wasn't afraid to ask for what she wanted.

Maybe he should've turned her away; normally, he would have. But there'd been something hopeful to her face. Something he hadn't wanted to disappoint.

He'd asked her in.

Now here she stood, surrounded by the ingredients for his mother's chocolate biscuits. He sat on a stool beside her, supervising, instructing, and it was so like that first evening they'd spent together. When he'd invited her in and made her a cup of tea. When in a flurry of foot-in-mouth disease he'd offered her a slice of Helen's birthday cake and subsequently lost his bloody mind.

He leaned forward in his seat, bracing his arms against the counter. That wouldn't be happening this time. He had himself under control.

Shrugging, Serena scanned the recipe they were working from and plucked a one-cup measure from the pile of implements he'd laid out. “It just seems like something that would be useful to know how to do. For Max, mostly. And. You know.”

“I don't.”

“It's a nice thing to be able to do. Bring a tray of something with you when you go to someone's house. Gifts.” Her voice quirked upward, a strange pitch to that word.

He looked at her askance. “Gifts for whom?”

“Anyone.” She dipped the measuring cup into the flour, then paused. “Okay, promise you won't judge me?”

“I make no such promises.”

She bit her lip as if trying to hold it in. But then she told him anyway. “Sometimes I go to the bakery down the street and buy cookies or brownies or whatever. Then I put them in Tupperware and pass them off as homemade.”

“Scandalous.”

“I know, right? Don't tell. There are just so many domestic types where I work, and among the parents.” Her expression soured. “I bet the moms at the private schools are even worse.”

Ah. So that's what this is about. “The ones at Upton?”

The school where she was so intent on sending her nephew next year.

Squaring her shoulders, she nodded. “Max doesn't have all the advantages of some of the kids there. I'll even the score however I can. Baked goods for the secretaries.” She glanced at him. “Private tutors. Whatever.”

“Of course.” A question formed on his lips. It was terribly uncouth. Nosy and awful. But she herself had brought it up in the first place. “Can I ask...”

She eyed him warily. But she didn't say no.

He worked his jaw, gulping. Best to be direct. “Max's mother.”

Sighing, she placed her hands on the counter. Left the scoop in the flour and dropped her gaze. “My sister. Penny. She's...not in the picture right now.”

Alive, then, at least. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—”

“No, it's okay. Just not easy to talk about, you know?”

Cole could only imagine.

Nothing brought out a woman's emotions like a child. Helen's face flashed hot across his vision, eyes red, cheeks flushed and damp, and if he could just...If he'd only handled it better.

If he'd only been a different man entirely.

The silence that settled over them pressed on his lungs, an awkwardness that made his fingers twitch. Serena's, too, it seemed. After a moment, she dug back into the bag of flour, fumbling with the measuring cup before hauling it out, soft white powder overflowing as she steered it toward the mixing bowl.

He reached out before he could think about it too hard.

Her wrist was so small in his grasp, the bones so delicate. Her skin was warm and soft.

She darted her gaze around to meet his, mouth twisting down.

With a soft grunt of an exhalation, he let her go. Clearing his throat, he tipped his head toward the kitchen scale he'd placed beside the mixer. “You have to weigh it. Or at the very least level it.”

“Really?”

“Truly.” He pointed to the mass in grams the recipe specified.

“Huh.”

Together, they got the flour measured out. As she dithered around, removing a couple of extra grams, she shifted her weight, chewing at the inside of her lip.

“She was just so perfect,” she said, seemingly out of nowhere.

It took him a moment to catch up. “Your sister.”

Serena nodded. “She was two years ahead of me, and all the teachers loved her. Straight As, awesome at sports, the whole package. Except...” She hesitated, lines appearing between her brows. “It started when she was a teenager, I guess. She had these times when you couldn't talk to her, could hardly even get her out of bed.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, looking back on it now, it's so obvious she was depressed, but at the time—it's not like teenagers are never moody, you know? And she was so resistant to the idea that she needed help. We thought we got it under control before she went off to college, but...”

She trailed off, and Cole clenched his hands against some broken, forgotten instinct that had him longing to reach out. There was a heaviness to her when she talked about her sister, and he heard the burden of responsibility in her tone. Serena had been the younger of the two, but she'd been the one doing the caretaking, hadn't she?

A wry smile curled her lips. “I think it's safe to say she engaged in some risk-taking behaviors once she was on her own. Self-medicating. Unsafe relationships. And in the meantime she was putting on a happy face in her messages home. But she was avoiding phone calls until...”

“Until Max.”

“Pretty much.” She shook her head. “God. I've never seen her and my mom fight like that. Her boyfriend at the time ditched her in a heartbeat, and she didn't know what to do. Mom wouldn't hear of her not keeping it, but Penny had this whole bright future laid out in front of her. Even if she hadn't, though. She wasn't in any state to be taking care of herself, much less anyone else.”

The picture snapped into place before his eyes. “So your mother took the child.”

“Penny was in and out of hospitals for a year after he was born. Mom's basically raised him since day one.”

He studied her face, watching the interplay of light across her features. The subtle, soft curve of her smile. The pride with which she spoke about this boy.

“Not without a bit of help, I suspect.”

“I was still living at home when he was born. I'd watch him after school, take him to his doctor's appointments, sit with him and hold his hand when he was sick.” Her mouth twisted, a wistfulness tugging the corners down. “My mom still gives me such a hard time about it.”

His eyebrows rose. “About helping her?”

“About not living my life.” She shrugged. “They're part of why I stayed so close to home, for college and even now. She thinks I should be out sowing my oats or something, like Penny is now, but I don't get it. I already have everything I want. I love my job and my friends, and I've got this great kid that I adore. I love my family. Is that such a crime?”

“No...” He hesitated.

Because how dare he ask the kinds of questions that were rising to his mind? After his own stagnation, his own withdrawal from anything and anyone...how could he ask?

But he did. “Maybe she wants you to have a family of your own?”

Her laughter was a sharp rush of breath. “Please.”

“What?”

“I'd love that. But...” She took the basket of flour off the scale, tapping her thumb against its corner in a staccato rhythm that set him on edge. “It's not easy, you know? Finding a guy who's serious. Who would commit.”

Of course. After what had happened with her sister, she had every right to her wariness.

And it burned him all the same. Made him sit a little straighter in his chair. Keep his hands a little closer to his sides.

“Anyway,” she said, voice loud in the quiet of the room. “My life is fine the way it is. I'm not going to change it for a man. Not unless he can give me everything I want.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Unless he's perfect.”

Cole's heart clenched, the very muscle, underused and tender, going tight.

He'd made his promises. He'd honored them all these years. And it didn't matter how lovely this woman was or how she'd barged her way into his life. How she'd made him
feel
for the first time in what felt like a century.

Promises were promises. And even if they weren't.

Perfection was a million miles beyond his reach.

Perfect.
The word rolled off Serena's tongue so easily, and with good reason. She'd had this conversation with her mother so many times. Her refrain was always the same. She wasn't ready or she wasn't interested or the men she met on dating sites were only looking for one thing.

Serena was looking for more.

Only the entire package would be enough to lure her away from the life she already had.

And yet, even as she was repeating those tired lines, she was looking at this man. At the scar on his lip and the frowning tilt of his mouth. The keenness to his eyes. The slope of his shoulders and the straight line of his spine, both radiating discomfort—both practically screaming that he didn't want to be touched.

But he'd let her in. He'd taken care of her nephew and he was giving her his time, telling her these basic things she should have figured out from her mother or from any of a hundred cooking shows, but which she hadn't.

He'd been rude, and he'd been gruff, and he'd listened to her babbling on about her sister without condescension or pity, with an even voice and with interest.

He was the furthest thing from perfect she'd ever seen.

And it was strange. She'd been attracted to him from the very first instant, but it wasn't until that moment, when she was saying out loud that she would never date someone like him, that she really let herself consider it.

What would it be like? To turn in to him, reach out her hand, and press a palm against the rough slope of his cheek? Brush lips on lips and taste his accent on her tongue. What would he do? Pull her in against his chest, wrap her up in warm arms, and keep her close?

Or push her away.

Face hot, ears burning, she dropped her gaze.

“What about you?” she asked, hands unsteady as she took the basket of flour and poured it with care into a bowl.

“Me?”

“Did you ever think about a family?”

She heard what she had asked at the same time he did. At her side, he stiffened, posture winding even tighter than it had been before, and she let loose a string of curses in her mind he might be proud of.

He'd shut down on her the last time at the barest mention of his wife. She'd been bursting at the seams ever since, curiosity eating her, but she'd thought she'd tamped it down. That she could be cool.

“I did,” he said, and the metal seat of his stool creaked with the force of his grip. “A long time ago.”

“Oh.”

She moved on to the next ingredient on the list, scanning the lines of containers just for something to do and someplace to look.

“It wasn't meant to be, though.”

A hundred questions pressed at her ribs. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep them in.

“My”—he hesitated, voice rough—“my wife wanted to. She was trying to convince me of it the night...” He sucked in a breath that could have been razors. Bleeding and sharp.

Her own lungs wouldn't work, the air in them going thin as she waited for him to let his out. To say...To tell her...

“The night she died.”

Oh God. She'd known. She'd figured, at least, but it was something else to have it spoken, hanging trembling between them. A crystalline web spun from confessions, glistening brightly in the light.

Only to shatter.

He rose from his seat in a lurching motion, knee near buckling as he got his crutches underneath him. “Eggs,” he said, and the word was watery. He swabbed at his eyes as he turned away from her. “We need—”

“Cole.”

“I'll just get—”

“Cole.”

But he didn't stop. He hobbled over to the fridge and tore open the door, rebalancing himself to reach into that space, to retrieve the cardboard carton. It shook in his grip, and her heart ached.

“Here.” He thrust it toward her. “I can't.” He gestured helplessly at the braces beneath his arms. “Infernal things, I just—”

One last time, she spoke his name, only for him to hurl the carton at the wall. He whirled around, and the fridge door slammed shut with a clatter, the whole thing rocking, something inside it falling over. With a crash, the eggs hit the ground, but she couldn't see them.

All she could see was this man, and the bands of control with which he was trying so damn hard to keep himself together. And failing.

His ragged inhalation was a hairline fracture to her ribs. His fist hit the front of the fridge, and then his foot, and there was another, wetter, angry sound of pain inside his lungs.

She was moving before she could think.

She stepped around the mess he'd made, right up to him. Those broad, strong shoulders still radiated distance, still told her with everything he had in him to stay away, but the hurt in his bones spoke louder.

And that was something she could never ignore.

With a hand on his arm, she tugged him around, and he resisted, clumsy with the crutches and as stubborn as the day they'd met. But she managed to get a hand on his face, to touch the stubbled line of his jaw, thumb brushing against the corner of his mouth. He let out a sound that might have been punched out of him, and her own eyes went blurry as she pulled at him to look at her.